Man for all regions

TO THE untrained eye, putting a Spaniard in charge of a quarter of the Union’s annual budget would be tantamount to a grandee asking a poacher to manage the estate and keep an eye on the pheasants while he was away.

European Voice

1/21/98, 5:00 PM CET

Updated 4/12/14, 2:52 AM CET

Surely, the argument runs, the temptation – and pressure – to ensure that one of the Union’s proudest and most deserving members, Spain, did well from the EU crock of gold would be almost too much to bear.

It is a tribute to Eneko Landaburu’s integrity and professionalism that Spain’s most senior European Commission official has never been identified with Madrid’s interests since he was appointed head of the Directorate-General for regional policy (DGXVI) in 1986 at the incredibly young age of 38.

“I have never been to a meeting where Landaburu has pulled the bedclothes over towards Spain. Indeed, he has frequently taken a tough line with the country. To some extent, his job was made easier by the fact that the Spanish authorities themselves have taken such a hard line on funds over the years,” says one senior official who has worked closely with him.

When Landaburu was appointed to the Commission, he was one of a new youthful generation of Spaniards who were climbing to prominence at home and abroad at the same time.

Most of them were Socialists and opportunities flourished for the able and ambitious in the post-Franco era. Landaburu himself had briefly been a Spanish Socialist member of the Basque parliament and his links with the party went back to the early Seventies.

He and Manuel Marín, who later became Spain’s first Socialist Commissioner, used to socialise together when the latter was first a student and then an assistant at the College of Europe in Bruges.

Landaburu was, and still is, on first-name terms with former Spanish Premier Felipe González and a photograph of the two together is prominently displayed in his Brussels office.

Those contacts were undoubtedly an important factor in his appointment to the Commission. So, too, was Landaburu’s francophone background.

Like many opponents of the Franco regime, his family lived outside Spain for a long time. One of seven children, Landaburu was born and educated in France. His wife is French and he worked for a pharmaceutical company in Paris and Brussels before becoming involved in a Belgian-based research centre on multinational companies.

This was followed by a stint with food giant Nestlé in Switzerland, where he worked in the company’s Latin American division. Immediately before taking up his Commission post, Landaburu was director of the Institut de Recherche sur les Multinationales in Geneva for three years.

Even now, he feels more at home discussing European concepts in French. He always makes opening presentations to MEPs in Spanish, but switches to French for the subsequent discussion.

“He is bilingual and his Spanish is grammatically correct, but Spaniards say that it sounds like someone who has lived outside Spain for too long,” says one colleague.

Landaburu’s combination of political, academic and business experience is unusual for a Commission director-general and helped bring him to the attention of Jacques Delors, who had become Commission president in early 1985. In time, Landaburu became part of the close-knit inner circle of confidants upon whom Delors relied heavily.

Apart from his obvious intellectual input, Landaburu’s responsibility for regional policy also meant (then and now) that he was more in touch than some of his Brussels-based colleagues with grass-roots thinking.

“He is not a stay-in-the-office bureaucrat. He is out on the ground almost every week. Of all Brussels officials, Landaburu is perhaps the one most in daily contact with ordinary people throughout the Union. It is the nature of the job. This helps him as an adviser to go beyond his strict policy remit,” explains one official.

That experience is now coming into play as the Commission finalises its proposals for the latest reform of the regional funds: the third time Landaburu has been involved in such a politically sensitive exercise where member states are immediately suspicious of any proposed change to the status quo.

During his tenure, regional policy has – for a variety of reasons – been one of the most active of the EU’s programmes.

Funding has twice been substantially increased and now plans are being put in place to extend programmes into central and eastern Europe. These changes have seen DGXVI grow into a major department with a staff of some 400 who handle around a quarter of the Union’s annual budget.

Coping with that expansion has not all been plain sailing for Landaburu. A couple of years ago, the Commission’s internal inspectorate service carried out an investigation into DGXVI and found that the staff considered the director-general too aloof and remote.

He took the criticism to heart and has since instituted more regular meetings with all staff. Around the same time, he also stuck his head above the parapet and wrote an article in the Brussels newspaper Vlan defending EU officials when their salaries and conditions came under attack in the Belgian media.

He is also noted for his openly political approach and flamboyant style in making presentations. But that technique can occasionally backfire.

Landaburu managed to annoy both Regional Affairs Commissioner Monika Wulf-Mathies and MEPs late last year when he gave an interview to a prominent UK daily newspaper suggesting that the days of substantial aid to almost a dozen major EU regions could be numbered under the new reforms.

He has also had to adapt to the style of different Commissioners. For six years he worked with the veteran Scottish politician Bruce Millan, a man who was painstaking about detail.

“The two worked very well together. The inside joke was that they could easily swap roles, with Bruce doing the director-general’s job and Eneko being the more public figure. He is an extremely good talker and presenter of ideas. He has a political mind, can get to the crux of the problem and express it clearly. He is always enthusiastic and has a very strong mobilising effect,” says one colleague.

It was during that period that Landaburu began to learn English – an effort he continues to make and which has helped him converse with his current Commissioner Wulf-Mathies, a German who has made her reluctance to speak French with her officials plain.

The youngest-ever Commission director-general, one of the longest serving and one of the most respected, Landaburu has inevitably been the subject of speculation about moves to other slots in the Commission from time to time. A few years ago, the unlikely suggestion was floated that he would swap regional policy for social affairs.

More recently, he was specifically offered the Commission’s major international job: director-general for external trade. Opinions are divided as to why this came to nought. But insiders believe that it was Madrid’s reluctance to lose a Spanish head at DGXVI, rather than Landaburu’s reluctance to work with the British Conservative Commissioner Sir Leon Brittan, which finally scuppered the idea.

Last year, Madrid formally put Landaburu forward as the only official challenger to the eventual winner, Carlo Trojan, for the top Commission post of secretary-general. The Spanish official harboured no illusions about his chances and the move was prompted largely by Spain’s wish to use the opportunity to build support for appointing a deputy secretary-general from southern Europe.

The big question now is what Landaburu will do next. “He has been in the same post for 12 years and has been round the track several times by now. Making speeches on subsidiarity, partnerships and regional policy can get boring and repetitive over such a long period,” says a colleague.

He will be 50 in a few weeks’ time and there seems no other post, apart from secretary-general, or possibly even Commissioner, which would tempt him within the institution.

The betting is that once the Agenda 2000 ship is safely steered into harbour next year, Landaburu will be eager to seek a new challenge.